Healing Breath
Zen for Christians and Buddhists in a Wounded World
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Healing our wounded Earth is not unrelated to healing our own personal wounds. The pains of the Earth and those of the individuals making up our Earth community cannot be separated. Thus the healing of our individual lives can become the basis of the healing of Earth. This book sheds light on Zen as a spiritual path that leads to healing - in the personal, social, and ecological dimensions of our being. If you are seeking a form of spiritual practice that addresses all three of these dimensions or simply seeking to deepen your understanding of the Zen path, it is written for you. If instead of fragmentation, disorientation, and vacuity, you seek wholeness, groundedness, and integrity in your life, it is written for you. Perhaps you, too, have come to realize that our global community is in a sad state of affairs, that we need to radically change how we live and relate to one another and to the Earth. You may already be engaged in some form of social or ecological action addressing these issues-and you may feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. If you've been tempted to pessimism or have thrown up your hands in despair when your best efforts don't seem to make a dent, this book is for you, Healing Breath offers a way to integrate a spiritual path with active, socio-ecological engagement as the ground.
This book also addresses another set of questions: can a Christian genuinely practice Zen? How is Zen practice compatible with a Christian faith commitment? To fully engage in a Zen practice, what kind of belief system is presupposed or required? How can spiritual practice in an Eastern tradition inform Christian life and understanding?
In the process of describing the Zen way of life, Healing Breath will consider various Christian expressions, symbols, and practices - not as an apologetic for that belief system, but to show how they, too, point to the transformative and healing perspectives and experiences provided by Zen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This book by a former Jesuit priest and Christian Zen master opens by presenting Zen Buddhist practice as a means to heal a "wounded" world. An introductory chapter with footnotes ranging from Heidegger to the World Watch Institute details myriad ways the world needs fixing. None of that is particularly fresh. What is fresh, however, is Habito's interpretation of Christian orthodox beliefs through a Zen lens: for example, Jesus' mystical body may be fruitfully compared to "this very body" of the Buddha. Given this parallel, both enlightenment and what Christians term "the reign of God" are already at hand. From a Buddhist point of view, there is nothing to attain; for a Christian, beholding God can happen right now rather than only in the afterlife. For both, the interconnectedness of all beings becomes apparent, and a statement like "God is love" can express a moment of enlightenment. These kinds of comparisons enrich and unlock the challenging and sometimes mysterious language of Christianity. For a Zen master, Habito sometimes writes too much like an academic ("A diagnostic view of the human problematic and its resolution"). This book's highest value is as Zen apologetic for Christians.